Wednesday, March 29, 2017

I'm about to move out of my 800-sq-ft loud, roof-leaky apartment that I'm paying
$1000 per month for; am seeking a duplex or small house around the same
size. There's nothing out there! Today I drove by the above, offered for
$1100 --- it was a shithole; in a crappy neighborhood on a crappy street.

But... but... I just got a raise! I make 50K per year! And this is all I can afford in Austin! A place where, as the tracks indicate, people feel the need to park on the front lawn.

Back in the '80s and '90s when I brought home $1234 per month, I lived in better places in Austin ($250 for a garage apartment in Hyde Park, $310 for a duplex on Rainey). And from 2000 to 2007, when I made about 36K per year, I lived in a neat house in a neat neighborhood that I paid $825 a month for.

I can't seem to get ahead. I now make 50K per year and I can't find a decent place to live.

Wow! Thank you, Universe, for the meaningful-to-me film that I caught by accident because I couldn't sleep at 3am on Monday morning.

I came upon this film on TCM about halfway through, not having any clue what I was watching. In the first scene that I happened upon, The Lovers were beautiful and embracing. The Girl was scared. Ominous shadows on the walls. The Girl begged the Boy not to leave. More shadows (as dramatic as "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari") as he left; he had to study for his graduation exams (really!).

I thought: It's a murder mystery. The Girl is about to be killed. Indeed, once her lover had left, she went about her shadowy apartment turning the light off and on. Once she'd gotten into bed, a shadowy figure appeared and she shrieked...

Now, I thought that the college boy would be blamed for a murder, etc. etc. Nope. She wasn't murdered. The Boy came back a day or so later... And so much more happened!

This film was surprising and, yes, wondrous, in its honesty. While watching to the end, I kept thinking, "I really love this film, but how in the world am I ever going to figure out who made this and who these people are?" Usually TCM films on so late have no summing up at the end, unlike their prime-time movies. This one did, though: Directed by Alf Sjoberg (whom I hadn't heard of), and... the very first screenplay by Ingmar Bergman! There's a tipping point of trust with artists, as there is with people you actually know... I'd seen "Wild Strawberries" and "Fanny and Alexander" and "The Seventh Seal" and I admired the man's work, etc. But with "Torment," I found I could trust him.

What I thought was going to be a simplistic (and lauded) noir-type thing (based, obviously, on all of the shadows and staircases that I was seeing) turned out to be a psychologically nuanced and interesting slice of reality. There was extreme darkness, but not just for darkness' sake. And there was banal darkness, of the type that I recognized. But also, in the midst of all of the pain, was everyday human kindness and decency, and a real, unphony sense of actual hope.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Your sweet nature, darling
Was too hard to swallow
I've got the solution
I'm leaving tomorrow
And now as I stand
And stare into your eyes
I see safety there
I want surprises

What I really need to do
Is find myself a brand new lover
Somebody with eyes for me
Who doesn't notice all the others
What I really need to do
Is find a brand new lover

When you wake up tomorrow
You'll be all alone
All the love that we had
I have quickly outgrown
I wanted to stay, but I just couldn't do it
Couldn't stand there and put you through it

What I really need to do
Is find myself a brand new lover
Somebody with eyes for me
Who doesn't notice all the others
What I really need to do
Is find myself a brand new lover
Somebody with eyes for me
Who doesn't notice all the others

My other loves will tell you that
I'm nothing but a pleasure-seeker
And for once I really must agree
I need to leave you by yourself
And go in search of someone else
To satisfy my curiosity

In this period of nothingness, have expected nothingness. Only, I got a treat last night. Ginny. A very long dream that I remembered almost nothing of when I woke up other than a good feeling.

I've been thinking cynically recently that, now that I'm over 50, it didn't matter that Ginny had died in '88. I'd wanted her to be young with. I'd wanted to explore Austin with her. To see bands, to get a first apartment with. Now that I'm over 50, I don't need her any more. I've done all of that "young" stuff by myself.

What I've been missing for the past decade or more, though, is the feeling of being loved. I've learned to live without it. What Ginny did when appearing in the dream last night was remind me: I was once loved. She left me emotionally years before she actually died, but for a few months in 1983, she loved me. I felt it. It was special, and that feeling has come back to sustain me over the decades, here and there. Not necessarily during my worst of times, but at surprising, unexpected times. Like last night.

During such long stretches of barren times, I've grasped on to anything --- TV shows like "Long Island Medium" or "Dead Files," for instance, which show how the dead attempt to contact the living. The former in a positive way; the latter, negative. I've not been attracted to the negative -- have usually been repulsed by it -- so don't fear that... But I've always wondered if some kind of spirit has been watching over me. My Me-Ma, for instance. Or Ginny. Or Joan. I wasn't loved at all by my family or by lovers, so wonder what has sustained me.

Monday, March 20, 2017

I lived at the white duplex at the end of this road from 1991 to 1994.
Two of my cats were buried in the backyard. (One, Toonces, was run over
in front of me as I called her one morning before work; the other, Katie
Scarlett, I found dead, run over, in my front yard when I got home from
work.)

Rainey Street is now a hipster bar district. My cats' graves have long been bulldozed.

This period of time was very unhappy for me, despite how much I loved
the place itself. Bad/very sad breakup. I was desolate nearly the whole
time. I would walk down to the river (a short walk to the right)
whenever I was upset. Got stopped by the police once at Thanksgiving
when I was stalking around grimly ("I'm just in a bad mood, officer.")
Also got stopped once by a couple of guys looking for a good time ("No
thanks. I'm just in a bad mood.").

It all could have been much worse.

I miss my cats. I miss the hope I felt when I first moved into this place. What the place turned into is worse than my own specific sad memories.

I bought the sticker months before I bought my car back in July 2016, purely to inspire me to get out of a rut: I couldn't decide whether to keep riding buses or to invest in a car after 9 years of being without one (after moving to NYC in 2007). I told myself: If Trump wins the nomination (which wasn't at all a given), I'll get a car to put this sticker on. He did, and I did.

Friends/family/co-workers then warned me about the dangers of having a Trump sticker on my car: My car would be vandalized, etc. But I had the courage of my convictions. It's been 8 months since I first put the sticker on my new car. 4 months since the election. 2 months since Trump actually took office.

Friends told me they were surprised I hadn't been vandalized sooner. Sad.

In the next month that I'm at this apartment, I'll make sure I park my car where it can be seen from my window. And today, I ordered a pack of 10 Trump stickers online. If I catch anyone touching my car again, I'll recognize the person and then slap a Trump sticker on THEIR car.

Friday, March 10, 2017

After catching the pseudo-deep (but acclaimed at the time) "Running on Empty" (1988) a few weeks ago on late-night TCM, I hated the movie's smarmy fakeness ("we radicals may have maimed someone and we may uproot our kids every 6 months, but aren't we warm and friendly on birthdays") but was struck by Phoenix's performance.

Phoenix died, age 23, at Hollywood's Viper Room on Halloween in 1993 an hour after a "friend" (allegedly John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers) gave him a bad speedball in the club's bathroom. No moral to that story, right? Phoenix was doing drugs. Accidents happen. (Though I believe in accountability, whether in the mainstream or in the underground: Frusciante and/or his dealer should not have been prosecuted by The Law, but they should have been taken out by their own culture. But... said "culture" was so disgustingly passive and "nonjudgmental.")

The movie I remembered most of River Phoenix's was "Dogfight" (1991) with Lili Taylor, which I paid to see at the theater. "My Own Private Idaho" (1991) seems to have made the biggest impression in the alternative world. (I saw it at the theater when it came out, but it didn't resonate personally at all.) "Stand By Me" (1986), of course, made the biggest impression on mainstream culture; I also saw this at the theater but, again, thought the over-fishing for emotion was smarmy.

After seeing "Running on Empty" and wondering why I was so struck by Phoenix's performance, I bought a used bio online: "In Search of River Phoenix" (2004) by Barry Lawrence. One thing he pointed out, which I'd been aware of via brief Internet searches, was the fact that Phoenix's parents had been involved in "The Family of God" when he was growing up; the group was a cult espousing sexual relations not only between children, but between children and adults. River Phoenix later said that he'd had sex from the ages of 4 through 10, then deliberately decided to refrain from sex until he was 14 (when he sought his parents' permission before having sex with an 18-year-old girl).

In the below 1988 video, Phoenix (at 17) is asked by the interviewer about his relations with his parents. RE their dynamic he says: "We replace the guilt that most give each other when they're upset with real, honest feelings."

I wonder: WAS River Phoenix actually able to talk to his parents about his anger and guilt at the life that they'd brought him up in? WAS he able to express "real, honest feelings" or did he instead do drugs? (An addendum: His able-bodied parents had a hard time finding work in real life. Once River Phoenix got work in movies, he was the primary bread-winner for the whole family. His parents claimed that once he earned enough to free the family from society, that was when they'd all withdraw to live a life among nature, and when River wouldn't have to work any more. Scumbags.)

However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here,

However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.

10

Allons! the inducements shall be greater,

We will sail pathless and wild seas,

We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under full sail.

Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,

Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;

Allons! from all formules!

From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.

The stale cadaver blocks up the passage—the burial waits no longer.

Allons! yet take warning!

He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,

None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,

Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,

Only those may come who come in sweet and determin’d bodies,

No diseas’d person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here.

(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,

We convince by our presence.)

11

Listen! I will be honest with you,

I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,

These are the days that must happen to you:

You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,

You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,

You
but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly settle
yourself to satisfaction before you are call’d by an irresistible call
to depart,

You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you,

What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,

You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands toward you.

12

Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!

They too are on the road—they are the swift and majestic men—they are the greatest women,

Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,

Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,

Habituès of many distant countries, habituès of far-distant dwellings,

Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,

Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,

Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children, bearers of children,

Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of coffins,

Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious years each emerging from that which preceded it,

Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,

Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,

Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and well-grain’d manhood,

Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass’d, content,

Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,

Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe,

Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

13

Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,

To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,

To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to,

Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,

To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,

To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it,

To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, however long but it stretches and waits for you,

To see no being, not God’s or any, but you also go thither,

To
see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor or
purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle of it,

To take
the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s elegant villa, and the
chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits of orchards
and flowers of gardens,

To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,

To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go,

To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them, to gather the love out of their hearts,

To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you,

To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.

All parts away for the progress of souls,

All
religion, all solid things, arts, governments—all that was or is
apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners
before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe.

Of
the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the
universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.

Thursday, March 02, 2017

1934 publicity by Hurrell. I first saw this photo in 1986 or so from
Walker's "Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Star" at my college library. I
confess my transgression today: I sliced this photo out of the library
book. I took it home with me. I taped it up to my wall. I looked at it
constantly for inspiration in the midst of my 21-year-old angst.

Wednesday, March 01, 2017

I'd subscribed to "The New Yorker" since some time in the '90s. For at least over 20 years. The vast array of subjects. The usually impartial viewpoint of the author. I was always tearing out pages or poems for remembrance.

During the past Trump election cycle, however, the anti-Trump bias of the magazine became ludicrous. And intolerable to me. I'd never seen such a heavy-handedly biased consortia of articles. They tucked an anti-Trump reference into almost every corner. I'd formerly, for decades, trusted the magazine's viewpoint and artistic integrity. Now I wonder: If they could go so wrong about Trump, where were they going wrong earlier that I just didn't catch?

The last week of January was my last issue. I quit solely because of their intellectually dishonest biased treatment of Trump.

There's a bit of withdrawal. I miss the bursts of enlightenment that some of the articles contained. (As I said above, I'd often tear out pages and mark segments of them to remember as something profound to me.)

Today, I got an e-mail from the company, offering a renewed subscription for an extremely low price, less than half of what I'd been paying before ($50 per year as opposed to nearly $100). I was very tempted. But, no.

I like Trump, sure. And criticism of him is fine with me. But not "criticism" that degrades him and calls him "Hitler" and "fascist," and predicts the end of Western Civilization as a result of his presidency. Ridiculous. Especially in light of the fact that his most controversial policy statement has been the desire to strengthen US borders and not allow illegals in (and to kick criminal illegals out). That such a very mild declaration of what was once mainstream policy (and is the policy of almost every other country on earth, aside from EU members) has inspired such antipathy is disturbing to me.

After the reception of the New Yorker renewal offer, I almost accepted. And then I almost replied: "Maybe in 4 or 8 years, after you've perhaps rediscovered your integrity, your intelligence, and/or your soul."